


loving can mend your soul

by dragmeddown



Series: we'll keep this love in a photograph [2]
Category: Narry - Fandom, One Direction (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Break Up, Fluff and Angst, Getting Back Together, Heartbreak, M/M, Narry - Freeform, Pining, Post-Break Up, Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:26:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8388979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dragmeddown/pseuds/dragmeddown
Summary: Part 2 of "time's forever frozen still"Niall and Harry have broken up, but Niall reached out and now they're trying this whole thing again.





	

As Niall neared the bridge, he noticed that a certain someone was already there.

Harry stood on the bridge, leaning with his forearms against the wooden railing, looking down at the water. It was a chilly afternoon in early November, and he had a dark turquoise beanie pulled artfully over his ears. It allowed a few curls to peek out from underneath, and was complemented perfectly by an olive green parka. It was open, the grey jumper he was wearing visible, and Niall couldn’t help but be annoyed. _He’ll catch a cold if he doesn’t zip that up,_ he thought, before he could stop himself. 

Every footfall felt monumental as Niall walked. His legs suddenly felt very heavy, yet the adrenaline from his nerves began to kick in which actually quickened his step. Suddenly, he because hyper-aware of his gait and facial expression. He didn’t want to be smiling, because this really wasn’t a time to be smiling, not yet anyhow, but he also didn’t want to look angry or begrudging. He was neither of those things, either. It was he, after all, who had suggested this meeting in the first place, and he was going to act like it. 

Trying his best to put on a facial expression that conveyed hopefulness with a healthy amount of guardedness, Niall set foot on the bridge. Harry had been so immersed in looking down at the swirling of the water that he started a little when he heard the thump of Niall’s foot on the steady wood. Neither of them said a word in greeting, and Niall took his place next to Harry, leaving an appropriate space between them, and joined him in staring down at the water.

The silence that followed was brimming, overflowing, with every single word that they had never said to each other after Harry left that one fateful summer afternoon. Neither of them knew what to say or do. Niall hadn’t thought about what would actually happen when they met again, for the first time in almost four months. He looked up from the water, and found that a pair of very familiar green eyes were already steadily fixed on him.

They just stared at each other, green eyes boring into blue, a virtual cocoon forming around them until they felt like they were the only two people left in the world, and had just happened to meet here on the old bridge on this frosty afternoon. The only sounds that broke the quiet were those of the water bubbling gently and the wind coaxing the last leaves from their branches. A mist had begun to settle. 

Niall took in every detail of Harry’s face. His hair was longer now, tickling his collarbones, and his lips looked incredibly smooth. Niall became very aware of his own chapped lips, but restrained himself from licking them: _licking them will only make it worse_ , he heard Harry’s voice say to him in his head, muted as though he was speaking from the very back of his brain. Harry was just as beautiful as before, that was for sure. His skin was paler than what it had been in the summer, although the faintest trace of the tan he had gotten still lingered on the tops of his cheeks. The only thing that Niall couldn’t chase out of his memory was what Harry had said the last time they had spoken face-to-face, and all at once the floodgates opened and his head was swimming with words and phrases that he had tried to keep out, all this time. _Feels wrong, drifting apart, need space, can’t do this,_ everything rushed right back in and hit him square in the chest; he couldn’t understand those words back then, the heat of the afternoon muddying his brain and making every thought fudge together. Now, they came as sharp bursts in the cold, but still he couldn’t make sense of them. He felt the tears welling up in his eyes and hoped to God that Harry didn’t notice, or if he did, just thought that it was the stinging cold. 

Before he could think of much more, Harry lurched forward and hugged him, long arms wrapping around his neck and shoulders. His scent was overwhelming; Niall hadn’t smelled it in so long. He was warmer than Niall could ever have guessed, the skin of his neck hot against Niall’s. His arms draped around Niall and pulled him close, and Niall instinctively threw his arms around Harry at his waist and hugged him tight. His tears spilled one at a time and crawled down the fabric of Harry’s coat as he rested his chin on Harry’s shoulder, digging it in because it felt just so good to be held by someone familiar. Being held by Harry felt like home. 

They swayed slightly on the spot, neither of them wanting to be the one to lessen the pressure and bring the embrace to an end as they fed off each other’s warmth and comfort. Finally, it was Niall who let go a little, prompting to Harry to quickly release him and step back, carefully wiping at his eyes - he had been crying too, it seemed, although Niall hadn’t realised. It suddenly occurred to him that had Harry not broken up with him that summer, he would probably have asked him to marry him that autumn. He pushed this completely out-of-line thought from his mind.

“What’re ye cryin’ for,” he mumbled instead, furiously wiping at his eyes and nose. The tears had begun to freeze on his face, and the feeling was unpleasant.

“What’re _you_ crying for,” Harry retaliated quietly, looking up at Niall. His eyes had lost their earlier burning intensity, and now looked vaguely glazed over. Niall met his gaze, but Harry looked back down at his feet.

“Look -” Niall started, but didn’t get very far.

“You know, let’s go back to mine,” Harry muttered, “I’ll make us a warm drink, it’s freezing out here and all of this crying isn’t helping….Also, I didn’t bring gloves and my hands are cold. So let’s go? I live nearby, it’s only a five-minute walk.”

He didn’t give Niall time to respond, turning on his heel and walking off, waiting for him to either follow him or let him go. The thought of a warm apartment and a hot drink was too appealing for Niall to decline, and he jogged a little to catch up to Harry.

They walked in complete silence. The didn’t hold hands, not only because that it seemed a little much for the both of them, but also because Harry was keeping both of his firmly in his pockets. His coat was still unzipped, which drove Niall up the wall, but he said nothing. It wasn’t his job to supervise Harry anymore, as natural as it felt.. 

They reached a street that Niall recognized from long ago, and Harry reached back to lightly grasp his forearm. He gently guided Niall to some grey steps that led up to the red door of a white townhouse on the corner of the street.

“This one’s me, watch out for Bandit, might be out and about,” he mumbled as he drew out the key from his pocket in one swift motion, like he had been preparing to do so the entire time. He was incredibly agile on the steps, and Niall stumbled after him. 

Before he had time to ask about who, or indeed what a “Bandit” was, Harry had opened the front door and stepped inside. A small something collided with Niall’s shins in excitement just after he cleared the door.

“Bandit, heyyy,” Harry cooed, picking up the small something from between Niall’s feet. It turned out to be a rather large, black and white cat, and it purred as loud as a jet engine when Harry scratched it between its ears. “This is her,” Harry said, reducing his giant grin to just a fraction of a smile as he looked at Niall, as though seeking some kind of approval. “She’s not mine, she belongs to the lady who lives in the flat downstairs. I’m on the top floor, are you alright to -” He gestured vaguely at Niall’s knee. He had had surgery on it that spring, and as far as Harry knew, it was still healing.

“Yeah, yeah it’s all healed, let’s go,” Niall said quietly, not meeting Harry’s gaze and instead giving the leg and knee in question a little wiggle. He thought it was sweet of Harry to think about a little thing like that, but equally it reminded him of their time apart - his knee had healed just fine, and he had stopped going to the physiotherapist in September. But of course, Harry didn’t know this. How could he?

They climbed the incredibly narrow stairs up up and up, until they reached what felt like the hundredth floor to a rather winded Niall. Harry wasn’t athletic but leapt up the stairs two at a time with ease.

“Here we are,” Harry almost whispered as he swiftly pulled out another key from his back pocket and unlocked this door. The fact that he kept his keys separate and loose in his pockets infuriated Niall, but again, he said nothing. _Not my job,_ he reminded himself.

Harry’s apartment was tiny but light. It was all contained in what seemed to be three rooms - the main room that consisted of a small kitchen in the corner, an uncharacteristically large wooden table, and a living area, and then the bedroom and bathroom that tapered off to the right of the front door. There were two large windows by the table, and the view was, while somewhat disturbed by the very top of a very large oak tree, beautiful. It overlooked the edge of the city, and the countryside spread out way beyond it. The hills were an inexplicably bright green, although the colour appeared a little muted through the ever-thickening mist. There was a small but bushy tree in one of the gardens quite a way off with leaves the colour of fire, and it stood out like a lantern. Harry’s house was the highest around, with only a few others, dotted here and there, daring to challenge it. 

“Nice place,” Niall said offhandedly as he gazed at the view all the way from the front door.

“Make yourself at home,” Harry replied.

Harry kicked off his ankle boots and strode to the counter. He put the kettle on, checking that there was enough water in it for the two of them, and opened one of the cabinets overhead to grab two incredibly large mugs.

“What tea do you want?” he said quietly, as if he didn’t know that Niall’s favourite tea was chamomile with a generous dollop of honey in it.

“Oh, anything,” Niall replied, as though he didn’t know that Harry knew very well what his favourite tea was. “Whatever you’ve got. I’ll have anything,” he repeated himself, trying so hard not to seem like a burden of a guest. He felt very much like a first-timer at his ex-boyfriend’s place, which was strange. How strange that two people who knew each other so intimately could feel so out of sync and ill at ease in one another’s company. 

Niall watched as Harry dug around numerous cabinets, rejecting at least five different boxes of tea until he found a yellow box that Niall recognized immediately as his favourite chamomile tea. He smiled as he watched Harry, because every movement was so familiar; the way he flicked the button on the kettle just before it came to a bubbling boil ( _boiling-hot water makes my green teas taste bitter, Niall, it’s science, they’ve worked it out…_ ), the way that after he had added a spoonful of honey to each of their mugs, he sneakily slipped half a spoon right into his mouth, eyes closing briefly as he let it dissolve on his tongue; every quirk was just as Niall had left it, and it made his heart burn bluntly. 

“Here,” Harry whispered, as he made his way over to the couch where Niall was sitting, spoons clinking against porcelain, and handed him the mug, “Careful,” he warned him. Their fingers brushed briefly in the handover, as Niall’s curved around the handle of the mug and Harry’s let go in turn. 

They sat once again in silence, Niall mixing his tea in an effort to make it cool faster, and Harry just sitting there, cross-legged on the opposite end the couch, his face now slightly ashen. He stared down at the small coffee table in front of the couch, with some small but thick art book on it that Niall didn’t recognize. 

As much as he wanted to confront Harry about what he had done, and most importantly, why he had done it, Niall couldn’t bring himself to it. Harry looked so miserable, like a stranger in his own home; he couldn’t possibly summon a harsh and accusing tone of voice. 

“Hi,” he said instead. They hadn’t said it yet today.

Harry gazed back at him, looking mildly alarmed.

“Look, Ni,” he started, and that’s when Niall snapped out of his haze. Nobody had called him Ni in four months. 

“Why did you do it,” he said plainly. His voice took on a dangerous edge, one that he had never heard from himself before. He surprised himself a little with how cruel he sounded, but it was too late. Harry almost visibly shrank back into himself, grip tightening slightly on his mug, knees drawing close together, head bowing down and hair shrouding his face. Niall was surprised that he didn’t just vanish right there, but kept his eyes up, staring intensely at Harry. He had suggested this meeting for reasons that remained a mystery to him, but now he was determined to at least get something out of it. 

“I…” Harry started in a voice that sounded so broken, so wounded and so sorry that Niall came very close indeed to forgetting all about his agenda and instead setting down his mug and moving over to hold Harry close. But he didn’t. 

“Go on,” he prompted, in his new severe voice that crackled through the air like static electricity, making Harry flinch a little and shrink away even more. “I didn’t come here to sit in silence,” he continued, his voice getting louder now, “I came here to figure this out. So talk,” he challenged. 

Harry glanced up at him slowly, and Niall was horrified to see that his face was streaked with tears. Harry was very good at crying without anybody noticing, as long as he kept his head down. His eyes were pink all around, and he didn’t raise a hand to wipe at them. 

“You...I thought…” he choked out, “I thought...you r-read my l-letter?” 

“That’s not enough, Harry,” Niall retorted, “we need to talk. Face to face.”

“Why n-not?” Harry asked, voice still thick, “I p-put everything in there Niall, the words I never got to say when we…when I...” he petered off as a fresh set of tears began their journey down his cheeks.

Niall said nothing. This figure in front of him looked so hopeless that there wasn’t anything that he could think of to say that could fix it. 

“Harry,” he tried, making an effort to take the edge off his voice, “don’t, look, you don’t have to cry…” This did incredibly little to quell Harry’s tears. “I just want to hear it from you. I read the letter, you know I did, but I need to hear it. From you, Harry,” Niall finished, taking a sip of his tea. It was just right, and it made him a little angry that Harry still remembered how he liked his tea. He didn’t know why. 

Harry sniffed and used his sleeve to mop up the tears on his cheeks and around his eyes. This only worsened the puffiness, but Niall couldn’t help but admit to himself that Harry was still so, so beautiful. _Beside the point,_ he reminded himself coldly. 

“Gimme a sec,” Harry laughed hollowly as he sniffed some more and tried to compose himself. “Look,” he began, “what I did was stupid. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done, maybe. I was scared, Ni -”

“Don’t,” Niall interrupted him, his tone once again bordering on brutal. He couldn’t hear that nickname right now. “You broke my heart, Harry,” he said accusingly, shutting him up instantly. “Do you even realize?” He was angrier now, it bubbled inside him like the boiling water that made Harry’s tea bitter. “You packed your things while I wasn’t home, Lord knows how you did it so fast, then you arrange to meet me, break up with me, and leave with all your things before I even got home. Do you have any idea how I felt that night, Harry? Do you?” 

“I don’t!” Harry shouted now, his voice cracking. “I don’t know, Ni. But I was a mess too, you know! I hurt you, but I also hurt myself! I cried almost constantly for a week, Ni I had to live with my mum until I found this place,” he gestured frantically at the room around them; its walls seemed to be closing in, suffocating them.

“Stop it!” Niall shouted back. “Stop calling me ‘Ni’, stop telling me about how hurt _you_ were, this is your - fault!” They had never had a fight like this back when they were together, and it scared Niall. However, he was too wrapped up in it all to register this fear right now, and pressed on savagely. “I’ll tell you how I was! I got home, Harry, and ran straight to your room because I wanted to _talk_ , God forbid, and it was empty! Your room was empty Harry, and I collapsed in there, I cried for hours and hours, I felt like the roof was coming down every bit of my soul _hurt_ , I ended up sleeping on the floor in there for the night because I couldn’t muster the energy to drag myself into bed! Meanwhile you were at your _mum’s_ house, in a warm bed, with people who love you…”

“I was upset too, Niall! I lay on the kitchen tiles for hours on end because it was the only way I could calm myself down enough so that I could remember to breathe,” Harry shrieked, his voice breaking on the last word.

Niall continued before any silence had the time to establish itself. “It’s your fault that we’re in this mess, you’re the one who had to go and tear everything up! We were perfect, Harry! Do you not realize that? We were perfect, and you ruined it!”

“We weren’t perfect,” Harry yelled back, and the walls quaked. “I wasn’t okay! I was scared that we wouldn’t work out in the end, I was scared that you’d leave me someday, so I beat you to it! I left so that you wouldn’t have to!”

“No,” Niall fired back over the end of Harry’s sentence, “you ruined everything! Why didn’t you _tell_ me you were scared, we could have talked! We could have sorted it out, without all of this! I was never going to leave you, Harry, I love you,” he finished, his anger reaching its peak. 

Harry opened his mouth, but nothing came out. The silence finally settled; all the anger in the room ebbed away and made room for the fear that had already threatened to rear its ugly head earlier. The walls stopped their movements and relaxed like the whole house had just exhaled. Niall felt a lump forming in his throat. His tea had spilled and left splatters on his dark blue jeans. He hadn’t even noticed. Harry’s tea had spilled too, not only onto his jeans but onto the couch itself as well. They stared at each other with the same intensity as they had had on the bridge earlier, but this time chests visibly rising and falling with exertion.

“Loved,” Niall corrected himself hoarsely, and if he had listened closely he could have heard Harry’s heart shatter at his use of the past tense.

~ 

They had finished their drinks in silence that day, and Niall had made a polite and somewhat rushed exit soon after. He couldn’t bear to sit in that stifling room, where neither of them had the strength to argue any more, nor the gall to try and strike up a normal conversation. 

His heart still ached two weeks since their meeting and subsequent shouting match. He didn’t want that to be the last time that he saw Harry, but he couldn’t explain why. As much as he resented him for everything that he’d done, he couldn’t bring himself to hate him no matter how much he wanted to, no matter how much he thought he deserved it. All he wanted was to get some form of closure, and so he texted Harry from the comfort of his bed. It was a Sunday morning, and there was no way he would be out of bed before 1 o’clock. 

Niall, 12:35PM  
_Still want to talk. Up for it? If yes, meet at Caracoli 3pm today? If no, ignore. - Niall_

He wasn’t sure whether or not Harry had deleted him from his contacts, so he always included his full name at the end. It wasn’t long before his phone chimed with an answer.

Harry, 12:37PM  
_yes want to talk also c u at caracoli at 3 -H_

Harry had always had a bad habit of texting people he was comfortable with using no proper punctuation or grammar whatsoever. It had annoyed Niall before, but he had gotten used to it; however, he was surprised that Harry had used that trademark style now, when only a few weeks earlier he had been all capital letters and proper punctuation. 

He had chosen a café as their meeting place on purpose - he feared that meeting Harry at his place, which used to once be their shared place, might get a little bit uncomfortable. There were too many memories associated with the apartment, and really, it was a wonder that he hadn’t moved out of the damn place altogether after they had split. Also, if they were in a public place, they were ten times less likely to get into another loud argument. Niall hated loud arguments, and he didn’t want to have to see Harry cry again. 

He still had time, so he threw himself back down onto his bed and curled up under the sheets where all was warm and well. 

~ 

Harry was already there when he arrived. He had secured them a table by the large windows that overlooked the street, so Niall spotted him as soon as he neared the café. His glasses steamed up a little as he entered the warm café, and made his way over to Harry without a word. They shared a look, the same intense look that they had now become all too accustomed to, before perusing the menu with much more meticulousness than could ever be necessary. Niall glanced over his menu sneakily now and then, and was relieved to find that Harry’s eyes did not look red nor puffy. They sat in silence until their coffees came, but it didn’t seem like silence as the sounds of the café filled it in with the cosy soundtrack of quiet indie music, conversation, and dishes clinking against one another. 

Finally, it was Harry who spoke.

“Where do we go from here?”

His voice was a mile away from the defeated and broken whisper that it had been the last time they met, and Niall couldn’t have been gladder. Harry’s normal, slightly raspy, low voice that he loved so dearly was back.

He caught himself in this thought, because he honestly couldn’t say where he was at as far as loving Harry was concerned. On one hand, everything about Harry screamed out to him - his face, his scent, his clothes his gait his hair his smile that had made such a regrettably brief appearance when he had picked up Bandit - everything that he had initially found attractive in Harry beckoned him. On the other, more harrowing hand, he couldn’t forget how he had felt that summer. He would maybe never forget how he had felt that summer, and it cast a cruel shadow over any and all hopes of reconciliation, of piecing them back together. And yet the thought of him, of Harry, of _them_ shone as bright as that flame-coloured bush that he saw from Harry’s window that had pierced through the mist that afternoon. 

“I don’t know,” Niall answered truthfully.

“I still like you, Niall,” Harry said, almost inaudibly. “Do you think we can…”

“I don’t know,” Niall repeated. “I don’t know. I don’t know what I want, Harry, I really don’t.”

“All I wanna know is, are you willing to give us another chance?” Harry asked weakly. “I understand if the answer is no, Niall, I really do, I know that what I did was shitty -”

“No, come on, let’s not talk about that, it doesn’t help...it’s in the past,” Niall muttered, “let’s focus on right now. What do you want?”

“You, Niall,” Harry replied earnestly. “There’s no point in me lying about it. I want _you_. I miss you.”

In Niall’s heart began that same dull ache that came around whenever Harry talked about missing him, and in that moment he wished with all his heart that he could find it in him to forgive Harry and start over. And in that same moment, he made a promise to himself to try.

“Okay,” he said, simply. Because what more was there to say? He reached his hand across the table and touched Harry’s fingertips with his own. Harry’s hand flinched a little in surprise but he didn’t move it away. “But if we do,” he continued, “we have to work through all of it. You need to tell me what I did wrong, so that I don’t do it again. We’ll have to start from zero.”

Harry smiled with the brightness of a thousand full moons, and moved his hand ever so slightly, allowing his fingers to overlap with Niall’s. His hands were very cold. 

“Which brings me back to my previous question. Where do we start?” Harry asked with quiet, understated eagerness. 

They started in that very café, that very afternoon. They talked through everything that had happened since the summer - how Harry had given up his job as a statistician, the only job that he could find fresh out of university with a maths degree, and instead decided to pursue a degree in creative writing, and about how Niall’s research work in a microbiology lab, as a part of his master’s, was going. Harry told him stories of the people who lived in his building; the old lady who owned Bandit, and how she sang songs from the 50s when she hung her washing up to dry in their building’s tiny garden, and about how she had invited Harry over for tea the day he had moved in. Talking about that day and that time seemed surprisingly easy for Harry, although his eyes started darting around more, avoiding Niall’s gaze, and he concentrated very ardently on the pattern of the small tablecloth. Seeing him like that tugged at Niall’s heartstrings, and he tried to make conversation about that day short. They ordered more drinks as the afternoon passed them by, and ended up sitting there for close to three hours, until the manager came over to tell them politely that they were closing. 

The evening had caught up with them, but they hadn’t noticed. They had been so engrossed in each other; they devoured every detail of one another’s face, every word that left each other’s mouth, they feasted in the pureness of the moment because it felt just like before, before anything had gone wrong. 

So they got politely chucked out of the café. They were headed in the same direction to go home, and as they walked Niall made the move to knock their hands together on purpose. Harry didn’t take the hint, much to Niall’s dismay, and so finally he summoned up the courage to gently stop Harry’s hand mid-motion and just hold it. He didn’t grab it tight, but rather closed his fingers over slowly, allowing Harry the time to remove his hand if he wanted to. He did not, and their grips on each other tightened, neither of them saying a word, as they walked on through the cold, the last flecks of light disappearing from the sky. It felt right, somehow, and Niall couldn’t even remember the anger that he had felt towards this very same boy only two weeks prior. 

“Harry,” Niall said, remembering something all of a sudden, “you never told me. You never told me why you thought I would...leave you.” The last words left his mouth feeling dry and his heart feeling heavy.

“Oh,” Harry replied slowly. Niall thought he wasn’t going to elaborate on it, and was prepared to press him for answers, but Harry gave a small cough and began.

“I just...sometimes, it felt like I had to work really hard to get your attention. Like you had better things to do besides me with me, or talk to me or spend time with me or whatever. That’s all,” he finished with an artful candour that made Niall wonder why he had found it so hard to say these exact words five months earlier. 

“Harry…” Niall began, but realised that he didn’t know what he was going to say at all. 

“And I’m not saying that it’s all your fault, I should have gotten that you can’t spend every single second of your day with me, Niall,” Harry continued, to fill the silence created by Niall’s hesitation, “but you ghosted on me, sometimes for days at a time, Niall. Days. I would hear you getting up before the goddamn Sun was up in the morning, and I wouldn’t see you all day, then you’d come home and go straight to your room without dinner. I was worried, Niall, but I didn’t want to butt into your life, y’know?”

“Harry,” Niall started again, “there’s no such thing as you butting into my life. Our lives are - were - intertwined,” he said, wondering what exactly he meant by that. 

“And I thought, I thought maybe you were seeing someone else, and then I told myself that you would never do that because you always came back after a few days at most, but then after a while you’d be off again,” Harry explained, a mild look of desperation lacing his face. “I didn’t know what to do, Niall, so I ran.”

Niall let the words linger in the air between them, like a bubble growing larger and larger until it popped. Their feet rustled some leaves underfoot. 

“I’m so sorry, Harry,” he said, for want of anything better to say. “I…”

He wanted to say that he knew what he was doing when he ghosted for days on end; he had been up to his ears in work, they had just been trying to finish up an analysis in the lab, for some big-shot company whose name now escaped him, and his football team was training up for a big game at the end of the summer. He wanted to say that he had had a million and one things to do that summer, and in all the commotion had forgotten about the single most central person in his life. He wanted to say sorry until the word lost its meaning through repetition and became just a string of letters, and he knew that still this wouldn’t be enough. He wanted to take Harry’s face in his hands, look him in the eyes and tell him all of this. Instead they trudged on. 

“I was scared, Ni,” Harry said, slipping back into old habits now, “I was so, so scared. I thought…” he paused and bit his lip, as though he needed to stop the words from tumbling out before he had the time to think them through. 

He didn’t reprise the sentence, so Niall obliged.

“What did you think, Harry?” Niall said, sucking up confidence from Harry’s momentary doubt but keeping his voice low. “That I didn’t love you anymore? That’s bullshit, Harry, I loved you more than I could ever have told you, but I was busy, you know I was -”

“Busy isn’t an excuse, Ni,” Harry interrupted, his eyes a little stormy as he looked as Niall from the side. “Even busy people make time for their friends. Their boyfriends. I was busy too, and still I waited up for you on late nights and made dinner and tried to organise time for just the two of us…”

“I know you did, Harry, and I can’t thank you enough for that, but I can’t change what I did. I wish I could,” Niall admitted bitterly, “but I can’t. I can’t change the past, nobody can. I want to make it up to you, Harry, I really do.” The words left his mouth before he had time to consider their meaning, but he found that really, that was what he had been wanting to say all along. That he wanted to make it up to him. That he _would_ make it up to him. That he would try his best to put it all back together.

“I would like that, Ni,” Harry said earnestly, and gave Niall’s hand a squeeze. They hadn’t let go the whole time. 

~

Niall yelped as his finger grazed the red-hot oven rack. He had been trying to pick the cookies off of it to cool on a plate, but the speed at which he had to work to not let the cookies burn his fingertips made him careless. He gathered the last couple of cookies into the palm of his hand, acutely aware of their heat, and tossed them onto the plate. He took one large step to the sink and ran cold water from the tap over his right pinkie. A small pink mark was already beginning to appear there.

At least it had been worth it - the fruits of his labour, the peppermint chocolate chip cookies, looked absolutely mouth-watering as they steamed on the plate, oozing half-melted chocolate here and there. Even though the fan in the kitchen was on, their smell lingered in the room and provided a warm comfort to Niall and his poor burnt finger. He stuck a plaster on it, and soon forgot about it altogether.

He was headed to Harry’s place in just under fifteen minutes, and he was very pleased with himself about getting his timing so right. If he played his cards right, the cookies would still be at least a little warm by the time he got them to Harry’s, along with himself. He had already changed, and luckily it was his apron that was peppered with flour and splodges of dough rather than his brand-new dark blue jumper with tiny little white stars stitched onto it. 

Niall put on his warmest boots and wool coat before he left his place, plastic container full of cookies in hand. They were the only source of heat for his hands - he had lost his gloves a while ago and kept forgetting to replace them. He shouldered a backpack as he made his way down the dark streets steeped in the soft glow of yellow streetlamps, carrying with him a change of clothes and his pyjamas - they were having one of their old-fashioned movie nights, and he knew he’d be way too tired to make his way back home once the movies ran out and the night and drowsiness truly settled in. 

He was highly aware of some very particular connotations that a movie night, complete with sleeping over at Harry’s, might have - he did not intend, in any way, to sleep with Harry that night, or indeed any other night in the foreseeable future. It was too early. He hadn’t finished healing, and he suspected that Harry hadn’t either, although he had always been slightly more forward and eager to get it on than Niall was. He strongly suspected that Harry wouldn’t try anything, though; not tonight. He would do anything, Niall thought, to preserve what they had this time around, because it had taken so many tears and words to get them there. Or so he desperately hoped. 

As Harry’s building appeared through the darkness, and Niall strode ever closer, he noticed two gleaming, slightly greenish dots floating halfway up the steps leading up to the door. He got to the edge of the pavement, where it met the steps. The greenish dots now revealed themselves as Bandit’s eyes, but she did not move despite the intruder. Instead she meowed especially loudly, greeting Niall. When he started up the steps, she moved gracefully to the side to allow him to pass, and he stooped down a little to drag his fingers gently through her fur starting between her ears and going all the way to the tip of her tail as she paced towards him, arching her back up a little. She purred in admiration and followed him up the steps, sitting down by his leg and waiting patiently as he rang Harry’s doorbell. He had clearly written the label for it himself, the words _Harry E. Styles_ just about legibly written in his slanting scrawl.

“Heya, Niall, come on it,” Harry’s voice sounded through the small speakers, and a dull buzz followed as the door unlocked for Niall. He hadn’t even asked for a name to check who was at the door - _could have been a murderer, for all he knew_ , Niall thought. He made a mental note to himself to tell Harry that this irked him. They had gotten to a point now where he felt that it was at least somewhat his job again to make sure that Harry didn’t do as many stupid things as he might without this supervision. 

He pushed the door open with his body weight and Bandit followed him inside noiselessly, sprinting right through the catflap on her owner’s door, directly on the left of the front door, before the stairs. Niall watcher her go and then began the ascent to Harry’s floor.

He knocked on the door softly, and barely five seconds later Harry had thrown the door open and was standing there, hands by his sides but lifted a little in what appeared to be an invitation for a hug. 

“Hi,” he said, moving back and beckoning Niall in. 

Harry’s apartment exuded enchanting warmth and light; Niall noticed that he had set up some fairy lights, snaking around the TV and the bookshelf beside it. They twinkled behind Harry, who was dressed in an oversized flannel, buttoned up three-quarters of the way, with a grey t-shirt underneath. His hair was down, spiralling in loose curls, and he was clearly trying not to smile too wide, but his dimples gave him away. He regarded Niall with the ever-present intensity in his eyes - his entire self made Niall’s heart beat double time. 

“I brought cookies,” Niall replied, rattling the box a little as he followed Harry inside, shutting the door behind him. He kicked off his boots and placed them neatly next to Harry’s overflowing shoe rack - he liked his shoes. Harry took the box of cookies from him, making sure that their hands overlapped completely as he did so. _Cheeky._

“Thank you,” he said simply, “I’ll get these in a bowl.” He smiled the smile of someone who was genuinely grateful for pure human kindness, and Niall felt his heart grow light. He slung his coat over one of the chairs at the very large dining table, and rolled onto the couch where he found that Harry had set him up with a duvet and pillow. Harry now stood in the kitchen, arranging the cookies in a large bowl and mixing the hot chocolates that he had prepared for them.

“So, I was initially thinking that we could watch _Love Actually_ ,” Harry began. He laughed when Niall’s face almost instantly turned to a look of _you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me_. “But then I decided that we’ll save that for when it’s actually Christmas,” he continued, pointing at the calendar hanging from his fridge. It was only early December, and everyone knew that the prime-time for watching _Love Actually_ was as close to the 25th as possible. Niall could see all the way from the couch that Harry had encircled the 25th with Christmas stickers, and had written “CHRISTMAS!” in large, glittery capitals. The entire decorative affair took up all eight squares around the 25th. 

Harry carried both mugs, one in each hand, and the bowl of cookies balanced on his forearm, over to the couch. Niall swooped in and took the bowl off him before any kind of catastrophe had time to occur. 

“Thanks,” Harry muttered gratefully, handing Niall his mug. It had a picture of a cartoon snowman on it. Harry’s had a reindeer. 

“I might’ve spiked them a little, just so you know,” Harry whispered, indicating the mugs. “Whisky I got from the old lady downstairs when I first moved in,” he explained. “She’s Scottish.” Niall took a grateful sip and nodded in approval.

“So what it is you’re proposing instead, movie-wise?” Niall asked softly, smiling at Harry like he was the world. The combination of everything - the hot chocolate, the darkness outside eclipsed by the fairy lights inside, Harry in all his splendour - was warming him up from his very core, making his heart go hazy and his vision cloud with the romantic possibility of the night. Late nights always had this effect on him, but it was amplified intensely by Harry’s presence. 

“So I thought,” Harry said, pausing to take a sip of hot chocolate, “that we’d watch _Up_ instead?”

Niall nodded, Harry grabbed the remote, and they watched. 

Harry had started the evening sitting in the middle of the couch, with Niall perched comfortably in the left corner, but he migrated slowly, perhaps not as sneakily as he would have liked, as the movie progressed. At the end of his pilgrimage, their legs were snugly pressed up against one another, and Niall found that he didn’t mind it one bit. It felt good to have Harry near him, and he even inched his hand closer and closer until his fingertips just brushed Harry’s. They sat like that for a while, legs glued together and fingertips touching ever so lightly, until Harry slowly moved his hand and enclosed it over Niall’s. It wasn’t the first time they had held hands since the breakup, but this time it felt somehow magical, surreal and reckless, all at once.

Harry quickly fell asleep, as he always did unless they were watching _Love Actually_ , and gradually tipped over more and more until his head found a comfortable resting place in the crook of Niall’s neck. Again, not that Niall minded - maybe it was the spike in the hot chocolate, but something had definitely inspired in him a pleasant warmth that spread from his belly up through his whole body, making him more welcoming to affection and intimacy. He ran his hand through Harry’s curls as slowly and gently as he could, so as not to wake him up, and found himself overwhelmed by the smell of Harry’s coconut shampoo. He sighed contently, and pressed a tiny, light kiss to Harry’s head, hoping to God as he did it that Harry was really fast asleep. He sort of knew that he was being overly affectionate, but also sort of knew that he didn’t really care - it was too good of a moment to let pass him by, and the memories of the past five months slipped away effortlessly. 

Niall managed to stay awake and watch until the end, and Harry woke as he shifted slightly when the credits began to roll.

“What’d I miss, did they make it t’Paradise Falls?” he asked groggily. As he turned to push himself back onto his own backside, his lips brushed Niall’s neck. Niall pretended not to notice, but could’ve sworn that his heart skipped at least two beats. 

“Harry, I need…” Niall yawned, “I need a plaster. For this one,” he said as he held up his pinkie. The plaster was coming unstuck. “Burnt it while making the cookies, didn’t I?” he laughed softly.

“Oh, shame, thanks for those, by t’way, they were great,” Harry mumbled, “there’re plasters in the cabinet in the bathroom, above the sink. Little blue box, can’t miss it. Hope you like Finding Nemo plasters, because those’re the only ones I’ve got,” he smiled cheekily.

“They’ll do just fine,” Niall smiled back, and made his way over to the tiny bathroom. He pulled closed the door behind him, leaving it open just a crack. He opened the cabinet, but could never have been prepared for what he found in there.

The cabinet was, on the inside, very much like any ordinary bathroom cabinet. It had an assortment of products, mostly hair-related, as well as three different tubes of toothpaste, all about half-empty, and a healthy stock of toothbrushes and floss on the top shelf. There were also at least six different bottles of nail polish of shades ranging everywhere from pitch black to aqua blue. Now that Niall thought about it, Harry’s nails were a pastel purple at the moment, but he wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for finding this collection. But none of these things were what caught him so off-guard.

It was what was stuck to the inside of one of the cabinet doors. It was a simple polaroid, the picture showing two people kissing underneath a mistletoe. Niall recognised the background as Harry’s mum’s house, and the two people in it were familiar, too. 

_Christmas of the year before, Harry’s mum’s house_

_“Oh, come on boys, one for the camera. Here, Harry, let me use your polaroid one, you can have a lovely print of it…”_

_Anne had snapped the perfect picture. It was Christmas morning, and the french windows leading into the garden made up the backdrop - a fairly thick layer of snow cloaked the grass and bushes outside, which was surprising for England. The sky was a pale, wintery blue. The morning light shone through the windows and illuminated the outline of the two people in a breathtaking glow. Harry and Niall were entangled around one another, Harry’s hands carefully cupping Niall’s face and tilting it up a little to meet his, and Niall’s hands rested comfortably at Harry’s hips. They were wearing matching Christmas jumpers that morning, Niall remembered, although it wasn’t evident in the photo. Harry’s hair was short but curly as ever, and Niall’s brown roots had grown out substantially that winter. They were both smiling into the kiss._

Niall’s breath hitched in his throat when he saw the photo. He remembered that moment so vividly that he felt a little dizzy, and steadied himself on the edge of the sink. On the white border at the bottom of the picture, he could make out the words _“we’ll keep this love in a photograph”_ etched there in black marker, in what could only be Harry’s signature scribble. He plucked the photo off the cabinet door and ran his thumb over it, as if to double-check that it was real.

“Niall, did you find the - oh.”

Niall’s head snapped up to look at Harry, standing in the doorway. His eyes darted from the opened cabinet to the photo in Niall’s hand to Niall’s eyes that were brimming with tears and a look of longing that Harry thought he had never seen before. It had always been there, though. 

“You kept this here,” Niall said. “Why?” he asked, so quietly that it was barely audible, even in the silence of the apartment, punctuated only by the soft music of the credits. 

“I told you already, Ni,” Harry replied, moving over in one swift motion to clasp Niall’s hands in his own, taking care not to crumple the photo. “I like you. In the present tense. I want us to work out, I really do.”

“Why, Harry?” Niall asked, utterly exasperated. The warmth of the spiked hot chocolate wore off all at once, and was swiftly replaced with a heady recklessness. He wanted to sort this whole mess out, _now_. “Why? If you wanted us to work so bad, why didn’t you do anything about it last summer?”

“I already told you that, too,” Harry retorted, not outright unkindly but still with some force, as he let go of Niall’s hands, letting the photo that was held between them fly to the floor. “I - was - scared,” he enunciated with the calmness that always follows a storm. “I was scared that I would be right. I thought…”

“Harry, we’ve been through this,” Niall continued, before Harry had the time to say what it is that he had thought, “I know exactly what you thought. You thought I was seeing someone else, or falling out of love with you, but I wasn’t Harry, I didn’t fall out of love with you until you left me all alone and never even had the courtesy to tell me _why_.”

Niall hated that they were back here, back in the middle of this same old argument where neither of them could get the upper hand and hold on to it long enough to end it. Suddenly he wished that he had never come looking for plasters, that he had never burned himself, that he had never made cookies, that he had never even come here in the first place because as good as everything felt when they were silent, the minute they started talking things though everything seemed to fall right back apart again. Every damn time. 

“I’m telling you why now, Niall, you said yourself that we can’t change the past. I’m in love with you Niall, I still am, I always was,” Harry said, his voice louder and more firm now than before. “I’ve loved you all the while. That’s why I kept that damn photo in there. Because I see it every day and it reminds me of us, even when I don’t want to be reminded. Because I didn’t have the heart to throw it out. I got rid of everything that reminded me of you, Niall, way back in the summer, because I was so hurt, but not that. I couldn’t get rid of that. I’m sorry.”

Niall observed him. He could see how sorry Harry was, he really could. They both glanced down at the photo that had fallen in between them on the floor, face up. They stared at it in silence for what felt like hours.

“I thought you were the one, Niall,” Harry whispered. Niall froze and did not look up. He half-knew what would follow, and didn’t know whether to silently wish for it or curse it away. 

“I thought you were the one I would marry,” he continued. Niall couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Harry had just repeated the exact thought that had crossed his mind only a few weeks earlier, the very thought that he had pushed to the side and ignored because of its sheer ridiculousness. He had thought this was a thought of the past, and yet here it was. 

They stood facing one another and neither knew what to do. Harry had just said that he thought he and Niall were going to get married, and Niall was processing this and wondering how it could be that they had been so on the same page. After everything. All of the hurdles that had stood in their way seemed to fall down, just like that. Because suddenly, it seemed to Niall that he understood everything that there was for humankind to understand in the universe. 

He took one pace forward, that’s all it took, and wrapped Harry up into his arms. They exhaled into one another, and Niall felt Harry begin to shake a little as tremors of euphoric relief rippled through his body. He pulled Harry as close as was physically possible, every inch of their bodies in contact with one another, it seemed. 

“Shh, Harry,” Niall murmured as Harry’s breath caught in his throat in a wet hiccup. “What’re ye cryin for, there’s nothing to cry about…” Niall gently rocked them side to side, rubbed Harry’s back with one hand and used his other to hold his head close, fingers running through his hair. Harry pulled back from the hug and let Niall cradle his head in his hand. His eyes shone brighter than ever, and Niall leaned forward to let their lips meet, for the first time in six months.

It was a gentle kiss, lacking all of Harry’s usual enthusiasm, mainly because he was trying really hard to stop crying now that Niall was kissing him. Niall could feel tears dripping from Harry’s nose down onto his lips but he kissed him all the same - chastely, no tongue, just like their very first kiss where they had both been so nervous that they couldn’t think about anything other than the fact that they were kissing each other, there and then. He nipped at Harry’s lips and they were incredibly soft, just as he remembered them to be. Harry’s usual technique was absent - usually, he was a massive tease, brushing their mouths together ever so slightly and using his slight height advantage to stop Niall from kissing him back, laughing softly when he tried. Now, he was so grateful for the very existence of the moment that teasing didn’t even cross his mind. He pressed his lips to Niall’s, nipping back and just _kissing_ him, putting everything that he had been trying to tell Niall into that one action. 

The kissed like that for a long, long time, pulling away briefly here and then to get some air, but going right back to it. Both of them felt like they could ever get tired of kissing each other. 

“I’m,” Niall breathed in between nips, “so sorry, Harry.”

“I’m sorry too,” Harry said, surprisingly articulately. He had stopped crying now and the tears had dried into salty tracks on his cheeks. Niall could still taste them a little on his lips.

“I love you, Niall,” he continued, breaking the kiss but staying nose-to-nose with Niall. “Always have. Already said it, but it’s so true.”

“Even in the summer?” Niall asked breathily, even though he knew exactly what Harry would say to that.

“Even then, Niall. I’m so sorry,” he repeated.

“No,” Niall whispered decisively. “Enough with the sorries, Harry. Let’s start again, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harry breathed back, in a way that shook up the butterflies in Niall’s stomach.

“Let’s put all that behind us, yeah? I promise to make you feel loved,”

“And I promise to talk to you if something’s wrong, you in?”

“So loved, Harry, because…” Niall hesitated. For the first time in six months, he felt it. He felt the ache in his heart subside, replaced by the familiar flush and lightness that he had last felt all those months ago. He saw Harry with fresh eyes, smelled his scent all over again, saw his smile for the first time, and it wasn’t the whisky or the romantic possibility of the night talking when he said what he said next. He couldn’t have be more sure of what he said next.

“Because I love you, too, and I'm in,” he finished, and connected their lips once more.

**Author's Note:**

> I went quite artsy-fartsy with the language in this one, and I would like to cite a couple of things that helped me with said artsy-fartsy language.  
> 1\. The poems of W.H.Auden. Seriously, check them out. Start with "As I Walked Out One Evening".  
> 2\. "When Love Arrives" by Sarah Kay and Phil Kaye. Fantastic.  
> 3\. A fantastic "writing" playlist on Spotify, as well as many other songs.


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